Enbridge Lubes the Pipeline Spin Machine

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If you live in British Columbia there's a good chance that by now you've seen the new Enbridge television; the warm and fuzzy cartoon animation with the soothing soundtrack and
the family strolling down what looks like the yellow brick road,
overlaid by a saccharine narration assuring the audience that the
company's oil pipeline and supertanker project is "more than a pipeline,
it's a path to our future."

Actually it's all part of a pacification campaign Enbridge has launched
in an attempt to qualm the legitimate and substantive concerns British
Columbians have around the prospect
of some 225 oil tankers, carrying oilsands crude from Alberta, annually
navigating the narrow, rocky channels and inlets of the Great Bear
Rainforest and pipelines crossing over 1,000 streams and rivers.

While launching
the $5 million ad campaign, Enbridge spokesperson Paul Stanway said,
"It's fair to say the opposition has firmed up in the last year" and
"It's become quite apparent that the debate has become a province-wide
issue."

That's code for "we're losing ground and we know it." To put
things in perspective, the Dogwood Initiative (a B.C. based NGO which
employs one of the authors of this article) has spent less money in
their entire 13 years of existence than Enbridge is spending on their latest ad blitz.

Enbridge has a credibility problem. They're an oil pipeline company.
They're out for themselves and people know that. According to a Polaris
Institute report, they spill oil 60 times a year on average, including a three million litre oil spill into the Kalamazoo River, in Michigan, two summers ago. As such, Enbridge has enlisted the multinational public relations firm Hill and Knowlton to help sell British Columbians on the Northern Gateway pipeline and supertanker project.

With 50 offices in 20 countries and affiliations with more than 70
associate companies, Hill and Knowlton is one of the world's largest
public relations firms. Hiring Hill and Knowlton speaks volumes about
the lengths to which Enbridge will apparently go to persuade the B.C.
public that supertankers and oilsands pipelines are a good thing for our
province.

British journalist George Monbiot, of The Guardian, describes
Hill and Knowlton as "the public relations company famous for the
unsavoury nature of its clients." Monbiot points out that Hill and
Knowlton "advised the Chinese government in the wake of the Tianenmen
massacre, set up lobby groups for the tobacco companies and coached the
girl who told the false story about Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of
incubators, which helped to launch the first Gulf war."

Source Watch states
that "Phony Earth First! flyers and press releases calling for violence
during Redwood Summer were traced to PR giant Hill and Knowlton by San
Francisco Examiner columnist Rob Morse," at the height of the campaign
to prevent California's old growth redwood forests from being clearcut
by Pacific Lumber Company.

Hill and Knowlton was also hired
by the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association several years ago to help
convince British Columbians that open net cage fish farms were not a
threat to our province's wild salmon stocks. In B.C., you would think
Enbridge would have learned from the salmon farming industry that hiring
expensive multinational PR companies does not make for better
environmental practices, but only increases public suspicion of
industries already suffering from a lack of trust.

The fact that Enbridge has enlisted Hill and Knowlton is not surprising, given the track record of collaboration. As the Globe and Mailreported
in July 2010, as part of an effort to "restore its reputation" Enbridge
hired Hill and Knowlton to "provide communications advice" after the
Kalamazoo River spill. Given the harsh criticism
leveled in the just released review of the Enbridge pipeline rupture in
Michigan by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, all that
"reputation recovery management," as they say in PR speak, has probably
gone for naught.

What is remarkable is that Enbridge has engaged the services of Hill and
Knowlton before the Northern Gateway project has even completed the
regulatory review process -- this attempt to buy British Columbians'
approval is an indication of desperation by a company that, despite
having a massive war chest at their disposal, just can't win public
approval in our province.

In the past year, Enbridge has lost key local governments in the
province's north such as Terrace, Smithers and Prince Rupert, who now
formally oppose
the company's proposal. And they have attracted the opposition of
southern local governments in politically important areas, the
province-wide Union of B.C. Municipalities and the B.C. NDP.

Enbridge says their hope for the ad campaign
is to "help British Columbians understand what the project is about,"
but being unable to change the fact oil spills happen all the time and
pipelines simply don't create long-term jobs means they will continue to
face an impenetrable wall in B.C. -- now they're just $5-million
poorer.